“Let me settle with this august bird, Uncle Tom, and then I shall be ready to talk to you about Mr. Smith,—Don Miff, as the girls call him.”
“Don Miff?—what girls?”
“The—ah, we gave him that nickname. I’ll explain when I get even with this noble fowl and light my pipe.”
“Did you,” asked my grandfather, advancing cautiously as a skirmisher, “meet any nice people in Richmond?”
“Oh, yes, very nice people up there,—too many of them; made me talk myself nearly to death,—but very nice people, of course, very. Look at that chap,” added he, holding up on the end of his fork a huge oyster.
“You spoke of girls,—did you meet any?” And a pang of jealousy shot through the old man’s heart, as he recalled Dick’s aphorism on the universal liability of young folks to a certain weakness.
“Oh, lots!—I’ll have to cut this fellow in two, I believe.”
“Who were they?” asked the old man, trying to smile.
“Who? the girls?”
“Yes; you did not mention any in your letters.”